


Pay Attention

by Lindzzz



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Blood, Gore, Horror, Human AU, Kidnapping, M/M, NO REALLY I THINK THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN MIND THEM TAGS YALL MIND THEM TAGS, Psychological Torture, graphic descriptions of murder and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:38:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/pseuds/Lindzzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch likes truly seeing people, seeing the pure parts of a person that are only brought out by fear and death. And he has never wanted to see someone so much as he wants to see Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pay Attention

**Author's Note:**

> Frosthoody on tumblr wanted "dark and creepy humanverse!au fic with your crazy pitch pov!" for her birthday.
> 
> Then I took that prompt 10000000 steps too far and she got this.

_Jack._

Jackson Overland Frost. But he goes by the simple moniker of Jack.

It’s such a common name. “Jack" is so excruciatingly plain that Pitch would have thought the sound of it would scrape and aggravate him. It should have been a heresy, for such a thing to have a name like Jack.

But there’s the feel of it in his mouth. The soft yet firm “J" against his hard palate and the finishing “ck" in his throat. And it so beautifully suits the young man. Jack is plain brown hair that will catch light in flashes of burned red and deep gold. He is brown eyes that spark with amber and mischief. He’s a normal smile that still makes those eyes squint up in a way that is a magic of it’s own.

And he is bruised.

Not outwardly, nothing so crude and obvious. Jack has the shadows under his eyes and a weariness in his shoulders. Life pressed down just so on him, and it’s turned him into a tender green leaf smudged and wounded by careless injury.

Jack…

He’s 26 years old, a school teacher and is very happy with his job. Even if the commute is a little trying. Jack works more in the city and lives in a small, cramped but reasonably safe studio apartment by himself.

Jack does a lot of things by himself. He often goes to bars and clubs and will make ten friends in one night.

But none ever stay.

Jack is not an idiot, though he often acts like one. When the murders reach the news he no doubt noted the proximity of the previous subjects and looked at his solitary life before getting an automated lock built into his door.

A few days later, Pitch comes by while Jack is at work and dusts for fingerprints on the number keys. He smiles as the dust reveals the subtle swirls brush by brush. Sometimes Pitch wonders if he should have gone into forensics instead of law. But his current job had gotten him easy access to Jack’s criminal record. ( _A few smatterings of petty theft and breaking and entering during adolescence. Jack had been a troubled foster care wanderer who had turned his life around some time in his late teens_.)

He snaps a few pictures on his phone for future note, then stops to admire.

Jack’s fingerprints are a hypnotizing maze. They dip and curve with no real purpose, etched forever into everything they touch. Pitch whispers his own fingertips over the prints, imagining that he can feel each swirling ridge as it would be on Jack’s fingers. Jack, who had touched these buttons and left just a trace of oil, of himself.

The prints smudge under his touch, drag and blend as Pitch leaves a trace amount of himself over Jack’s marks.

He shivers, finishes brushing the dust away and walks away with his fingertips pressed to his lips.

Later, in his workroom, he zooms in on one of the pictures of the keypad. He prints and hangs a detailed and crisp photograph of Jack’s fingerprint on the cork-board next to his favorite picture of his latest subject.

It’s one of his better shots. Jack is standing outside his school in the playground, laughing while he leans down to look at something one of the children has brought to show him. Pitch managed to get a perfect profile of him, eyes crinkled from the smile and hair catching the midday sun.

‘ _Not long now.._.’ Pitch thinks, smiling and running the same fingertips that touched Jack’s prints over the photo.

"Lovely, isn’t he?" Pitch sighs, fondly regarding the ever expanding wall of photos and other memorabilia. “You know, I don’t often spend so long one subjects before I decide it’s time to really see them. But this one is different somehow. I can’t decide what’s to be done about him." He laughs, with the exasperated sound of someone who is facing a delightful problem. “I spent so long trying to figure out how to see him that I’ve seen three others in the process. That’s unheard of for me!"

There’s a shuffling sound, a choked little whimper of noise that he ignores. That is part of the process after all.

The longer he waits, the more anticipation rises, the more fear that builds and strips away the drab walls of lies that people build around themselves.

Ah, but if he waited too long the perfect window would pass and he would have to wait again. With one last warm, lingering look at the photograph he turns towards the main breadth of the workroom

Gerard Crullier sits in the middle. Bound and gagged to a plain wooden chair in front of the full length mirror. Pitch has no need for the ornate and grotesque deaths that TV murders seem so fond of. It’s not about the gore and the mutilation.

It’s about that pure, crystalline moment right before someone dies. When fear and terror and the creep of death polishes away the essence of a person and shows what they truly are underneath.

"Pay attention." He says gently, lifting a knife while his takes Gerard’s chin and directs the man’s gaze at the mirror. Watery eyes stare at the razor in his hand with growing terror and Gerard whines, yanks against the ropes while his breath breaks into terrible little sobs.

"No no, don’t pay attention to me. I’m only the tool here. This is about you, after all." He turns Gerard’s face again until the man is staring down his reflection. “You see," Pitch begins. He’s explained this many times, but each subject deserves their own lesson and he never tires of educating them. “There are so many guides and tricks to finding yourself. But this is all you need. A knife, a mirror, and a willing tool."

The blade is a flash, a stripe of chrome that draws out a ribbon of red across Gerards throat. The blood falls in an even pour, smooth for a second before it begins to bubble and spurt with each heartbeat and each gargling grasp at air.  
  
“Pay attention.” Pitch breathes. “Don’t fight the fear. Just relax, and pay attention. Watch.” He holds Gerard’s head in his hands firmly, keeping the panicked tear filled eyes on the mirror. Not everyone can calm down enough to see it. Sometimes Pitch fails to show them what they’ve been looking for their whole lives.  
  
“There isn’t much time.” He explains. “You only have a minute at most. And this is what everyone wishes for isn’t it? Seeing their true self.” He doesn’t know if the man hears him. Gerard’s eyes are already glazing over, the gurgling and obscenely wet gasps petering off. Pitch stares into the mirror, heart pounding and breath coming short in his lungs.  
  
Almost almost it was close just a few more seconds and there. That brief flash before the light dies out. A pure note of song as the soul flares itself in one last beautiful dazzle of life before it all leaves. It’s that moment Pitch lives for. That everyone lives for.  
  
He has perfected the method of distilling people. Of bringing them down and wearing away the dull edges of them to show the brilliance beneath. It takes an exact combination of fear and death. Fear lowers peoples walls, it makes them vulnerable and open. The only reason everyone avoids showing fear is because of this, Pitch has realized. Fear is the purest emotion, the most animal and base instinct that makes a soul sing.   
  
And that final moment before death is the final stroke of a polishing cloth, easing away the false pretenses.  
  
Pitch lets out his breath slowly when he releases the shell that used to be Gerard. There’s always a loose lethargy that hits him afterwards. He feels pliant and weary in a very relaxing way. It is like the satisfied tired after a long day of work.   
  
He falls into a large chair near the smaller working chair, feeling wonderfully boneless. The satisfied smile only grows when his eyes are pulled inevitably to Jack’s wall.  
  
Oh how he wanted to see Jack. Pitch hadn’t wanted to peel back the layers of someone quite so much. He aches at the idea of bringing Jack out, of seeing the fear in those amber eyes, seeing the gorgeous pure being hiding beneath the shackles of the world.  
  
Which is the problem.  
  
Jack deserves something more than a plain mirror and a slashed throat.   
  
Pitch wants to take his time with Jack.  
  
Wants to see the light spark in so many ways. Wants to see it over and over and find out if it would flare differently every time.  
  
He wants to see every angle and every drop of blood. To feel it over his hands only to put it all back and bring it out again in new ways.  
  
Of course, he only has a single chance. A single moment.  
  
One could never be enough.  
  
He wants everything.  
  
Pitch lets his eyes wander over the pictures, the bits of hair, the stolen shirt from the laundromat that was hung up as soon as Jack’s smell wore off of it. There’s slick on his fingers and he rubs them together idly, a brilliant smile coming over his face and lighting his eyes up.  
  
“I think I’ll keep him.” He announces to the body, grinning wide to himself.   
  
—————————————  
  
Jack wakes slowly. Agonizingly slowly.  
  
Taking him hadn’t been a challenge at all. Pitch knew the code to Jack’s door and after that it was only a matter of waiting with the cloth of chloroform. It may have been old fashioned, unsophisticated, but the feel of Jack jerking against him and hands grasping at his, then slowly weakening and turning small and limp made it worth it.  
  
He forces himself to hang back, takes himself to the shadows to watch when Jack begins to stir. It’s not the perfect angle, but he has several cameras set up strategically to get the best angles on Jack’s fear. Pitch has already made a note to himself to save a picture of the way Jack looks curled up in his lounge chair. A small, vulnerable warm thing still in his dress shirt and a loose blue sweater that he had worn to class earlier in the day.

There’s a moment of softness, where Jack only stirs and slowly wakes up, relaxed and for a few seconds probably thinking he had only dreamed earlier.  
  
Pitch can see the exact second that Jack fully wakes, when his eyes snap open and the little movements of waking up go still and tense.  
  
“Shit.” Jack whispers, carefully not moving as his eyes move up, instantly landing on his wall (as Pitch had intended. Jack’s chair is set to face the wall, he can see the rest of his gift when he gets up.) Pitch can see Jack’s hands spasm and clench when he looks at the array of pictures of himself. The photo’s had been accumulated over the course of nearly a year, noting changes in Jack’s hairstyle or clothing choices.  
  
Jack doesn’t take his eyes off the wall as he finally pushes himself out of the chair, scrubbing a hand over his faces before pushing it back through his hair. “Shit shit shit what the hell?”  
  
His fear is gorgeous. Jack doesn’t shake, doesn’t cry and panic, but the fear is there. It’s in the stillness in his limbs and the twitching of his fingers. The fear is in the way his eyes dart all over the wall (pausing and widening on pictures of him with the children, no doubt worried more for their safety) and in the worried furrow of his brow.

Jacks eyes land on the pinned up shirt and his eyebrows shoot up, a breath leaving him in a noisy gust as he rakes his hand over his face again with a sound that borders on a hysterical giggle. “Wow. Wow, I was wondering where that went. Okay. Okay I’m just…going to be skinned and turned into some psychopath’s stuffed doll. Obviously. Shit."

Stuffed doll? Skinned? Really, and people call Pitch a psychopath. It’s amazing the sort of monstrosities the rest of the world can casually think up. Making Jack into some sort of corpse doll would ruin the entire point of bringing him here to watch. Obviously.

Pitch’s eyes flit to the middle of the room, this is wonderful to see, but Jack needs to hurry up. There’s a limited window of time here.

Stacey seems to read his mind, shifting in the chair and making a small, weak noise. Pitch eyes the shallow gash in the side of her throat. Not large enough to drown her, but enough for a steady and even flow of blood to pulse rhythmically down her side. He went outside of his usual methods, but he needed her to stay alive long enough for Jack.

Jack, who turns slowly, looking ready to attack, then stops, face stricken. The delicate pink runs from his face, leaving him nearly as pale as Stacey, who he runs over towards.

Stacey is an unremarkable girl. Not plain but not pretty, with brown hair and brown eyes and a habit of caring for others too much to make up for the lack of care given to her. She was often alone and constantly travelling or reading to find her inner peace.

Pitch had seen the similarities and thought to himself that there was no person more suited to being the first human Jack really saw.

"Oh god oh my god are- come on oh God no no no hey. Miss can you hear me? Oh God oh God!" Jack presses a hand over the gash, hands shaking violently and eyes practically glowing with the terror in them. He’s incandescent with it. Pitch regrets only being able to see it in profile and the only thing that keeps him from rushing out to grab Jack’s face, to yank his chin up and look into those horrified eyes, is the cameras picking up every twitch and shiver.

The blood wells up between Jack’s fingers, pools down and traces over the knobs of his knuckles and seeps under blunt nails. Red collects in the webbing between his fingers and stands out fluid and sharp against pale skin. Jack lifts Stacey’s head up with his other hand, his breathing coming in precious, shallow flutters and eyes starting to gleam with wetness.

"No no no come on stay with me. Can you hear me? What’s your name?" He tries to keep his voice calm, a faint tremor giving him away as Stacey’s eyes flutter wearily.

"Stacey…" she murmurs. Jack let’s out a breath and presses harder on the gash, taking in a shaking inhale before putting on a quivering smile.

"Stacey huh? Wish we were meeting under better conditions. You need to stay awake ok Stacey? Just stay awake please please just stay with me."

Stacey blinks at him slowly, white lips moving for a few seconds before she finds the air for a whisper. “He said it was for you. You need….need to get out…"

"We’re both getting out of here! Listen to me Stacey we’re both going to be ok. Just hang on I- I’ll find something to wrap your neck up with ok?"

"Don’t look…he wanted you to look." Stacey’s voice is a soft breeze of hair, a quiet exhale with words.

"Look? Look at what, no no Stacey come on stay with me!"

"You’re pretty cute, if I was gonna live I’d ask you out." Stacey smiles, a weak twitch at the corners of her mouth.

Jack smiles back, eyes finally starting to spill over and his breats breaking in little hitches. “I’ll totally take you out, ok Stacey? We’re getting out of this psycho man cave and I’ll take you to some swanky French place, unless you don’t like French food."

"In the movies they always say they feel cold…" Stacey whispers, eyes glazing over when she looks up at Jack. “But I don’t really feel anything."

It’s a physical pain, not being able to see the flare that he knows is building in her. But this is Jack’s moment. This is something beautiful and private, as the blood pours over his hand and he cradles Stacey’s cheek in his palm.

"No no no Stacey! Come on don’t-"

"Don’t look." She whispers, “he wanted you to look."

Jack’s eyes widen, watching as she goes slack and the blood stops pulsing between his fingers.

"No. No nono oh God oh fuck Stacey no come on!"

He breaks like a work of art. Like fine cracks over a priceless vase, accentuating the beauty beneath. His fingers, stuck together with drying blood, tremble violently as he pulls them back. His knees buckle as Pitch watches, couldn’t NOT watch the brilliant, scattered and pure light that the crushing fear brings to Jack’s eyes.

There is steel, beneath those cracks. Something sharp that Pitch can only see a ghost of in the way Jack kneels loose on the floor, head bowed and blood covered fingers in a bone white fist against his knee.

He hadn’t looked away when Stacey died, had ignored her warnings and kept his eyes on her face when the last breath left her. Pitch carefully moves forward, bare feet silent on the tile floor as he approaches Jack from behind.

He wonders if there had been a sound, of if Jack had simply felt him there, because there is no violent start, no scream or cry when Pitch curls a hand over the thin and shaking shoulder. Jack simply shudders, straining like a finely plucked string on the most beautiful violin under Pitch’s palm.

"Did you see, Jack?" Pitch breathes, reverent at the quiet, shaking glow that fear brings out in this young man. “Did you see her?"

The steel is there, and it finally snaps under the cracks of terror. Jack explodes. Surging up from his knees with a scream of rage and horror, twisting to face Pitch fist first.

It’s almost better than the quiet shattering, Jack is radiant as he swings. Pitch is glad the boy had turned around, so he can see how the rage twists his face, makes his eyes glow wild and dangerous. Jack doesn’t hide his fear under the rage, he embraces it.

And if Pitch hadn’t already known of it, hadn’t already seen hints of the blade Jack holds within him, it might have worked. But he was prepared for Jack’s danger, for the wildness hidden under the bright smiles, and caught his fist. Twisted and moved his leg behind Jack’s knee, smiling in the face of that rage and terror while Jack falls.

Pitch is quick to grab the other arm, to twist and lock them both behind Jack’s back as Jack writhes and snarls beneath him. Jack isn’t weak, but Pitch has held down stronger subjects with less effort and his grip is like iron.

"You saw it, didn’t you?" He asks again. Jack lies face down on the floor, choking as the puddle of blood slowly crawls towards his face and twisting against Pitch’s hold.

"Let me go! Let me go so I can fucking kill you!"  

_Oh._

Oh that would be…

Pitch chuckles, smiling at the shivering warmth Jack’s threat brings. “Not yet." He says placidly, “I don’t think you’re ready for that yet. But you watched her. You saw it didn’t you? Tell me you saw it."

Jack only curses, shouts and struggles until his skin bruises under Pitch’s fingers. Watching the color bloom under his touch, seeing smears of red and purple spill under Jack’s skin was fascinating, but it came with a wash of disappointment.

He hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t seen the brilliant glaring light.

Pitch tightens his fingers, something cold and hard rising in his chest. “You blind idiot." He hisses, wrenching back against Jack’s shoulders hard, making him cry out and stop his struggling. “You failed her! You made it a waste!"

Jack shudders again, letting out a small keening sound that resonates from his throat before the anger comes again, making his voice shake. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’re psychotic!"

"And you’re not paying attention!" Pitch snarls and grips Jack’s forearms with one hand, wrenching him up to his knees and grabbing a fistful of hair in his other hand. He yanks up, forcing Jack to face the cooling body still tied to the chair. “All everyone wants is to be seen! To be acknowledged and known for what they are! To know themselves!" He hisses, shaking with some unnamed emotion, something between passion and anger with a touch of something unnamed. “But this world dulls them, puts shields around them and only fear and death can bring them down! In that one split second before death, when a soul is on the threshold, you can see them. A person’s true self shines through."

Jack only makes a questioning, hoarse sound and Pitch shakes the fist in his hair, ignoring the startled cry. “And you didn’t look enough! I was going to show you, to let you see her but you failed! It only matters if someone is there to see it, but now she died for  _nothing_!"  
  
Jack stills again, breath coming in frantic little bursts and Pitch gentles his touch, unclenches his fist and smooths his fingers through Jack’s hair as the blood pools around them.  
  
“But there’s time,” he says quietly, “I can show you Jack, you’ll see it.”  
  
————————————————————————  
  
Fear for his own life doesn’t effect Jack. Which is interesting, since Jack doesn’t show the other common traits of “heroic” types.  
  
Pitch’s rage is only met with a cold stare, any abuse only makes Jack go quiet and silently dare Pitch to do his worse.   
  
Threatening or even grabbing at Jack makes him close up, makes the walls come up firmly and hide everything but a quiet, challenging anger. But it’s Jack’s fear that Pitch wants to see, the stripping away of all those walls so he can see the pure cut gem underneath.  
  
He doesn’t get to see Jack’s real fear again, until he brings Timothy Bridges down.  
  
In the end they both had to be gagged, Jack begging almost more than Timothy was and driving Pitch to distraction. The fear is beautiful, it sharpens Jack more than it does any other human. Something in it cuts Jack down to his bare essence, distills him perfectly into a single quivering, wide eyed point of pure Jack.  
  
But he needs Jack to see, needs to show him how to see people, so Pitch won’t be alone with his work. He still can’t figure out how to best bring out that spark in Jack, so he has decided to teach him instead, absolutely sure that Jack would be able to see it, to understand.  
  
Timothy is at the usual place in front of the mirror, bound and gagged to the chair where he can easily view himself. Pitch may be educating Jack, but he will not neglect his subjects for it. Jack sits nearby, close enough to be able to see Tim’s eyes, though with they way he’s carrying on and yanking at the cuffs holding him down to the chair he’s going to miss everything.  
  
“Pay attention,” Pitch says tersely, having already explained everything to Tim. He shoots a pointed look at Jack, who shakes his head violently, making a broken noise through the gag and slamming his eyes shut. “Jack!” Pitch snaps, already tired of the tantrum, “I’ll make it slower if you don’t. pay. attention!”  
  
He doesn’t want to, drawing a death out too much can sometimes sour the experience, and he sometimes wonders if that was what went wrong with Stacey. But Jack is the concerned, noble sort who would at least want a quick death for others, even if he doesn’t understand the value of them.  
  
Tim makes a panicked sound then, and really between the two of them the amount of noise is absurd. Pitch sighs with greatly strained patience when Jack stills, opening amber eyes and oh.  
  
There it was.  
  
It throws Pitch for a second, the brightness in Jack’s eyes. It has nothing to do with the wetness gleaming at his bottom lid and everything to do with the horrified knowledge in that gaze. The raw, pleading look and wild energy that makes Jack vibrate in his chair. That look was a priceless masterpiece, something that should be preserved and kept safely behind a glass case for his personal viewing.  
  
But he can’t neglect Tim. As captivating as Jack’s terror is, this is not Jack’s moment.   
  
The grip of the knife, freshly sharpened and cleaned as it is for everyone, sits in his hand like it was grown there. He cradles Tim’s head in his other palm, holding him firm. “Now,” he says softly to both of them, “pay attention.”  
  
Jack’s scream is the only thing he hears when he slices through Tim’s throat. Even muffled as it is behind the cloth gagging him it seems to drown out every other sound. Every gasp and wet gurgle from Tim is drowned beneath the screaming.  
  
It’s beautiful, but this is Tim’s event.  
Pitch sweeps over to Jack, where luckily he still has a good view of Tim, who stares at the mirror in wide eyed and horrified fascination. “Sshhh, Jack!” Pitch grabs a hold of Jack’s chin, keeping his eyes on Tim and leaning down to press their cheeks together, giving them the same clear view. “Watch for it Jack, watch, it won’t be long now.”   
  
Jack trembles in his hand, breaths catching in desperate sounds and Pitch can feel wetness hit his cheek as it slides down Jack’s. His heart pounds in time with the pulsing blood, his own skin shaking along with Jack’s until it feels like they are one unit, two parts of a whole symphony.  
  
It’s almost a sensory overload, watching Tim begin to surface from the walls of the world while Jack quivers under his hand. He can see the spark of life and the pour of bright blood, feel Jack’s jaw working beneath his grip and the tears touching both their faces, hear Tim’s chokes mingling with the short quick gasps Jack pulls in through his nostrils and smell the fear sweat on Jack mixed with the blood in the air.  
  
“There it is.” He breathes, sighs as Tim flares in a true, beautiful moment before everything is extinguished. Pitch’s lips part on an unsteady exhale and he hears Jack whimper in response. Jack is a warm pressure on his cheek, the tears hitting him hot and wet and he turns his faces towards him, inhaling deeply, losing himself in the smell of Jack.  
  
He moves his other hand to wrap loosely around Jack’s throat, shivering at the feel of sweat and the pounding pulse beneath his fingers. His nose bumps into Jack’s cheekbone and he leans into it, closing his eyes and feeling Jack shaking all over, opening his mouth into something like a kiss against the flushed skin of Jack’s cheek. There’s salt on his tongue, sharp and sweet and perfect.   
  
His mouth moves over Jack’s face, up to the temple, tasting the delicate mix of salt and sweat and the shaking horror wracking through Jack’s frame.  
  
“Did you see it, Jack?” He breathes, lips still pressed to Jack’s temple. “Did you see him?”  
  
Jack wrenches, breath catching on a sob that yanks on his whole body and shakes his head violently, whimpering a sound that could have been “no” against the gag over and over. The disappointment hits Pitch like the end of a long fall. The weightless ecstasy crashing down around him and leaving him feeling drained and tired as he presses his face into Jack’s hair with a long sigh.  
  
“Next time,” he says with conviction, “you’ll see it next time.”  
  
————————————————————————————  
  
Jack doesn’t see it next time. Or the time after that. It’s like the boy is purposely shutting himself down at the perfect moment, forcing himself to only see death the way the rest of the world sees it.   
  
It’s not about the life, the life was always just an overture, a build up to that perfect final note. And Jack won’t see it!  
  
And during the in between times, Jack is quiet. His eyes always stray to the pictures on the wall, fingers drifting over photos from the school or various clubs and bars. He’s paler now, and thinner, despite Pitch bringing good meals and keeping a stocked fridge filled with whatever Jack would need. Jack is a wraith of his former self, a quiet, wide eyed spectre haunting the underground room.  
  
But Pitch can see the beauty beneath. It’s like cutting away the flaws on a gemstone. At first the cuts seem random, leaving only a misshapen hunk of rock. But the final product…it takes an artists eye to see. And pitch can see the imperfection being cut away bit by bit.  
  
It’s a torture, when he’s at work. Smiling through his normal life at the firm, running through cases and researching the fine points of the law while knowing that there could be something that he’s missing. Some moment that he isn’t there to witness.  
  
“Why not me?” Jack asks once, sitting on his bed and staring at the spot of the floor that never really loses it’s stain. “Why won’t you just kill me?”  
  
His voice, already a low and husky thing, was quiet and hoarse now. There’s no inflection to the question or in his wide eyes. Pitch looks up from his book, moving quickly over to Jack and running a hand through his hair reassuringly.  
  
“Do you think I don’t want to? That I don’t want to see you?”  
  
Jack’s gaze jerks up, meeting Pitch’s eyes with something bright and unreadable. That glowing, glimmering and wild stare hasn’t left Jack’s eyes now, it’s become a permanent feature that Pitch always has trouble looking away from.  
  
“Oh Jack…” Pitch sighs, one hand sliding over his cheek, ignoring the flinch and stillness that follows. “I can hardly think of nothing else. But what is for other people isn’t good enough for you. With you I want to peel you open, to pull back your skin molecule by molecule. I want to see each layer of you, every part of your dermis and then your muscle. I want to spend an hour on each ligament and drop of blood and hear you crying my name the whole while.”  
  
Jack shudders under his hand, jaw clenching.   
  
“I would cut open your veins,” Pitch continues, voice low and breathless at finally getting to let out the visions that never leave him, “drain you till you’re pale and dried, then fill you back up and bring you to life. I would wrap my hands around your throat and feel your windpipe straining under my palm. I would see your eyes as your lungs strained for air and you finally flashed, perfect and glorious, before the last breath left. I can’t count the ways I want to bring you out of yourself, the endless list of ways I could work you down and see you perfect. But I’m a selfish man,” he finishes with a smile, “and I’m afraid I want it all.”  
  
His grin widens, as a thought comes to his mind, “It’s like that song! I want it all, and I want it now.” He kisses Jack’s forehead, still smiling with the feel of Jack’s icey skin on his lips.   
  
  
———————————————————————  
  
“Did you see it?” Pitch whispers, fingers ghosting over Jack’s jaw line while the smell of blood fills his senses.  
  
Jack swallows, shaking still, though he no longer cries. Pitch stopped needing to gag him a few months ago because of how quiet Jack has become.  
  
A shift of movement, Jack turns his head and looks up, staring Pitch in the eye. There’s a new glow in those eyes now, something sharp and bright that makes Pitch’s breath catch in his lungs. Those eyes glare up at him, nearly incinerate him with their brilliance and Pitch realizes that he has brought another layer away from Jack, that he’s seeing something a little closer to the truth of Jack.  
  
“No.” Jack hisses, eyes blazing.  
  
———————————————————-  
  
“I think about killing you.”  
  
Pitch looks up from where he scrubs the floor, smiling brightly at the thought. “Do you?”  
  
Jack sits in the cushioned chair, hands clutching each other in his lap but otherwise still and calm as he regards Pitch. “I’m not as good at romance as you are.” He says, voice steady and strong. “But I’m sure I think about it just as often.”  
  
“What ways do you want to kill me, then?” Pitch asks, honestly curious.  
  
“Like I said, I’m not as romantically inclined as you.” There’s a flash in Jack’s eyes, a bright flare of beauty that still stops Pitch in his mental tracks. “I just want to see a blade go into your gut and my hand to be on the other side of it.”  
  
Pitch grins, he doubts Jack will try it, not yet anyway, but he could almost dance at the very idea of it. “That would be lovely.” He says with a smile.  
  
Jack says nothing, so Pitch resumes cleaning the floor.  
  
——————————-  
  
There are some days when Jack is more quiet than usual, when he sits on the bed and simply stares at the plain wooden chair with wide, blank eyes.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” Pitch finally asks, moving the mirror into position. He’s been watching Erica Drumme for nearly two weeks now, and the time is coming close.  
  
“Stacey.” Jack says quietly. “Everyone else has kind of blurred, but I can’t…I can’t stop thinking about her. Every time I sleep I can see her face and hear her voice. I can see us meeting somewhere else, I wonder what she was like. I wonder if we had met above, what would have happened. Sometimes I forget…I forget that I’ll never get to find out. And I’ll wonder what restaurant I’ll take her to when we get out of here.”  
  
There’s a thrumming in his chest, a bright elation that sends his heart hammering against his ribs. “You saw her.” He breathes.  
  
Jack jumps, whips his head around to stare at him with wild eyes. “I didnt!” He yells, more active now than Pitch has seen in a long time. “I didn’t see whatever it is you think is there! She died! That was it! You don’t see anything! You’re just some psychopath and all she did was DIE!”  
  
Pitch moves to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders while Jack scrubs his hands through his hair. “You saw her Jack, you saw a true glimpse of her, that’s why you don’t forget her. Why not accept it for what it is?”  
  
“I didnt!” Jack grits, fists tight enough in his hair that Pitch is sure he’s tearing some of it out, “I don’t see what you see! I’m not like you!”  
  
“No.” Pitch agrees, holding Jack close, “you’re something better.”  
  
———————————————  
  
Pitch had been expecting a knife, and while it was a lovely thought, he still hid his collection away when he was not in direct contact with them. Death may have been a lovely thing to think about, but if he was being honest with himself, he was not sure he was quite ready for it.  
  
He hadn’t expected a broom of all things.  
  
Pain explodes from the side of his head as he steps down into the workroom, a blinding flash of white and red across his vision and a knife sliding down his nerves from the blow. Some part of his mind not rattling around in his skull wonders what Jack is using before he remembers the simple broom left down here after a few autumn leaves had been dragged in by Erica.   
  
He manages to catch the broom in his palm on the next swing by sheer luck, feeling it smack into his hand as he blindly throws it up. While unintended, he doesn’t waste the chance and quickly grabs it, trying to wrench it from Jack’s hands.  
  
The broom is yanked back, he can hear a violent snarl as his vision clears and he looks up as Jack plants a kick in his chest.  
  
Jack, who is blinding. Who is something wild and fey, filled with fire and blazing with horrid life.   
  
There’s only a second that he can admire, before he’s dodging the wild swings again, a broom handle isn’t really a deadly weapon, but he doesn’t want to try explaining too many bruises the next day.  
  
He rolls away, shoots up and kicks out at the center of the broom between Jack’s hands. The sharp crack of splintering wood is deafening over Jack’s surprised grunt, and Jack staggers back from the force of it.  
  
“A broom, Jack? Really?” He sighs, straightening up and fixing his hair. “What happened to the kni-”  
  
He registers Jack rushing at him, gets caught by the feral look in his eyes, and there’s a wash of pain from his abdomen.  
  
Jack grips his shoulder tight, fingers bruising him as he pulls Pitch in, shoving harder at the broom while he does it, pushing the shattered end further into Pitch’s innards. “I had to improvise.” He pants, face pale, eyes red rimmed and glowing.  
  
There’s wetness, a hot slick gushing out from around the broom. It’s disconcerting feeling it twist inside him and hearing the squelch as the jagged edges of it catch on his organs and shred them.  
  
Jack shifts, changes the angle of the broken wood and the agony nearly makes Pitch pass out. He does make a sound when Jack shoves up with all his might, pushes it violently up under his ribs.  
  
He swears he can feel something pop in his chest, and there’s the taste of blood in the back of his throat, on his tongue, spilling over his lips.  Pitch sinks down, feeling his vision going grey as he tangles a hand in the front of Jack’s shirt, pulling him down with him.  
  
“Jack,” He chokes, coughs on the red filling his mouth. “Look Jack.” He grabs at Jack’s face with his other hand, though lifting his arm is a struggle. “Do you see it Jack? Do you see me?”  
  
His heart pounds, pushes the blood out through his lungs and through his mouth. Jack is shaking, sending tremors up the broken handle and resonating deep in Pitch’s chest next to his heart. The amber eyes are nearly gold, pupils mere pinpricks in the sea of blazing light.  
  
He knows the answer before Jack even says anything, before thin, pink and chapped lips falter and shake over one agonized whisper that guides him down into the blackness.  
  
“Yes.”


End file.
